Christianity As Mystical Fact

NATURAL SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT has deeply influenced the formulation of
present-day ideas. It is becoming more and more impossible to describe
the spiritual requirements of the life of the soul without reference
to the methods of thinking and the conclusions of natural science.
However, it must be admitted that many people satisfy these
requirements without taking into account the trend of natural
scientific thought in modern spiritual life. But those who are alert
to the pulse of the times must take this trend into consideration.
Ideas derived from natural science conquer our thought-life with
gathering momentum, and our unwilling hearts follow hesitantly and with
apprehension. Not only the number thus conquered is important: there
is a power inherent in natural scientific thought which convinces the
observant that a modern conception of the world cannot exclude its
impressions. Several of the side-growths of natural scientific thought
compel us to reject which this method of thought has gained widespread
recognition and attracts people as if by magic. The situation is not
altered by the fact that isolated individuals can see how true
science, through its own power has long led beyond the shallow
doctrines of force and matter, taught by materialism. It appears to
be far more important to heed those who boldly declare that a new
religion should be built on natural scientific ideas. Even if such
people seem shallow and superficial to those who know the deeper
spiritual requirements of humanity, nevertheless they should be noted
because they claim attention in the present time, and there is good
reason to believe that they will win increasing recognition in the
future. And those also must be considered who have allowed their heads
to take precedence over their hearts. These people are unable to free
their intellects from natural scientific ideas. They are oppressed by
the need for proof. But the religious needs of their souls cannot be
satisfied by these natural scientific ideas. The latter offer too
comfortless a perspective for their satisfaction. Why be enthusiastic
about beauty, truth and goodness if in the end everything is to be
swept away into nothingness like a bubble of inflated brain tissue?
This is a feeling which oppresses many people like a nightmare.
Therefore scientific ideas also oppress them, pressing their claims
with tremendous authoritative force. As long as they can, these people
remain blind to the discord in their souls. Indeed, they comfort
themselves by saying that true clarity in these matters is denied the
human soul. They think in accordance with natural science so long as
the experience of their senses and logic demand it, but they keep to
the religious sentiments in which they have been educated, preferring
to remain in darkness concerning these matters, a darkness which
clouds their understanding. They have not the courage to struggle
through to clarity.

There can be no doubt whatever that the method of thought derived from
natural science is the greatest power in modern spiritual life. And
one who speaks of the spiritual concerns of mankind may not pass it by
heedlessly. Nevertheless it is also true that the method by which it
attempts to satisfy spiritual needs is shallow and superficial. If
this were the right method the outlook would indeed be comfortless.
Would it not be depressing to be forced to agree with those who say,
Thought is a form of force. We walk with the same force with which we
think. Man is an organism that changes several forms of force into
thought-force. Man is a machine into which we put what we call food,
and produce what we call thought. Think of that wonderful chemistry by
which bread was changed into the divine tragedy of Hamlet! This is
quoted from a lecture of Robert G. Ingersoll, titled
The Gods.
It is irrelevant that such thoughts, casually expressed, apparently receive
little recognition. The main point is that countless people,
influenced by the natural scientific method of thought, seem compelled
to assume an attitude in line with the above quotation, even when they
believe they are not doing so.
(See Author's Comments)

The situation would indeed be comfortless if natural science itself
forced us to the credo advanced by many of its newer prophets. Matters
would be entirely comfortless for one who has become convinced from
the content of this natural science that its method of thought is
valid and unshakeable in the realm of nature. Such a person must say
to himself, However much people may quarrel over individual questions,
though volume after volume may be written and observation upon
observation collected about the struggle for existence
(See Author's Comments)
and its insignificance, about the omnipotence or powerlessness of
natural selection, natural science itself moves on in one direction,
and must find increasing agreement within certain limits.

But are the demands made by natural science really as they are
described by some of its representatives? The behavior of these
representatives themselves proves that this is not the case. Their
behavior in their own field is not such as many describe and demand in
other fields. Would Darwin and Ernst Haeckel
(see Note 1a)
ever have made their
great discoveries about the evolution of life if, instead of observing
life and the structure of living beings, they had gone into the
laboratory to make chemical experiments with tissue cut out of an
organism? Would Lyell
(see Note 1b)
have been able to describe the development of
the crust of the earth if, instead of examining strata and their
contents, he had analyzed the chemical qualities of innumerable
stones? Let us really follow in the footsteps of these explorers who
appear as monumental figures in the development of modern science! We
shall then apply to the higher regions of spiritual life what they
have applied in the field of the observation of nature. Then we shall
not believe we have understood the essence of the divine tragedy of
Hamlet by saying that a wonderful chemical process transformed a
certain quantity of food into that tragedy. We shall believe it as
little as a naturalist can seriously believe that he has understood
the mission of heat in the evolution of the earth when he has studied
the action of heat upon sulphur in a chemical retort. Neither does he
attempt to understand the construction of the human brain by examining
the effect of liquid potash upon a fragment of it, but rather by
inquiring how, in the course of evolution, the brain has been
developed out of the organs of lower organisms.

It is therefore quite true that one who is investigating the nature of
spirit can only learn from natural science. He really needs only to do
as science does. But he must not allow himself to be misled by what
individual representatives of natural science would dictate to him. He
must investigate in the spiritual domain as they do in the physical,
but he need not adopt their opinions about the spiritual world,
confused as they are by their exclusive consideration of physical
phenomena.

We shall act in conformity with natural science only when we study the
spiritual evolution of man just as impartially as the naturalist
observes the material world. Then in the domain of spiritual life we
shall admittedly be led to a method of consideration differing from
the purely natural scientific method as geology differs from pure
physics or the investigation of the evolution of life from research
into purely chemical laws. We shall be led to higher methods which,
although they cannot be those of natural science, yet hold good in the
same sense. Many a one-sided view of natural science will allow itself
to be modified or corrected from another point of view, but this only
leads to progress in natural science and thereby one does not sin
against the latter.  Such methods alone can lead to penetration into
spiritual developments like Christianity, or the world of ideas of any
other religion. Anyone applying these methods may provoke the
opposition of many who believe they are thinking scientifically, but
nevertheless he will know himself to be in full accord with a truly
scientific method of thought.

An investigator of this kind must also go beyond a merely historical
examination of the documents relating to spiritual life. This is
necessary just because of the attitude of mind he has acquired from
the consideration of natural occurrences. When a chemical law is
explained it is of little value to describe the retorts, dishes and
pincers which have led to its discovery. And in explaining the
beginning of Christianity, it is of just as much or as little value to
ascertain the historical sources drawn upon by the Evangelist Luke, or
those from which the book of Revelation of John was compiled.
(See Author's Comments)
In this case history can be only the outer court to
research proper. By tracing the historical origin of documents we
shall not discover anything about the ideas in the writings of Moses
or in the traditions of the Greek mystics. In these documents the
ideas in question are expressed only in outward terms. And the
naturalist, investigating the nature of man, does not concern
himself about the origin of the word man, or how it has
developed in a language. He keeps to the thing itself, not to the word which
expresses it. And likewise, in studying spiritual life we shall have
to keep to the spirit and not to its outer documents.